Ivy Bridge and the Z77 Express

Ivy Bridge architecture is pretty much Sandy Bridge: the fact that this CPU family is a "tick" means that Intel's more interested in process refinement rather than big architectural changes. Still, there are a few new items, and here's what Intel would like you to know about:

Intel Rapid Start technology uses an SSD to hold system state information, enabling very rapid wake-up from a power-down state. Think of it as hibernation on steroids. This is something you'll see on Ivy Bridge-based laptops and ultrabooks.

Intel HD4000 graphics offer up to double the performance of HD3000, as well as improved Quick Sync transcoding and 3D performance.

The 16 PCI-E lanes provided by the CPU are now Gen 3 instead of Gen 2; this means twice the bandwidth per lane.

Integrated USB 3.0 (four ports) via the Z77 chipset.

Hardware based random number generation for encryption and security applications.

As far as actual performance improvements go, Intel's test results show raw compute performance in the range of 3%-9% better than a Core i7-2700K in most benchmarks. Intel says the biggest performance improvement will be with graphics and transcoding using the HD4000 integrated GPU, when compared to the previous-generation Intel HD3000 GPU built into the Sandy Bridge processors. The video transcoding should be a nice win if you have a program that uses this feature, but even double the performance of the HD3000 isn't anything that will excite most gamers, as we'll see in the graphics benchmarks later in this review.

While the desktop Ivy Bridge CPUs don't seem to have many real advantages over Sandy Bridge, in the ultrabook catagory we're going to see some action. Ultrabooks are hot, and Ivy Bridge mobile CPUs will bring significant power savings, which is a real win when you're running on a battery. Apple is expected to revamp its entire Macbook line to Ivy Bridge, while bringing all models to Air-like thinness, and just about every PC vendor has new Ivy Bridge-based ultrabooks coming out as well.

Intel's official "die shot" of the Ivy Bridge CPU looks almost identical to the one they showed for Sandy Bridge. Sharp-eyed observers will notice that the Processor Graphics section looks different, with what appear to be eight "cores" instead of the six visible in the Sandy Bridge die shot. This works out well with the increase in functional units from 12 in Sandy Bridge to 16 in Ivy Bridge, assuming two "functional units" per core.

Intel has introduced ten new chipsets (collectively known as Panther Point) to support their twelve new Ivy Bridge CPUs. We're interested in the top-end desktop offering, the Z77 Express. If you think the diagram below looks exactly like that for the Z68 Express chipset, you're forgiven: the differences are few and subtle. Comparing the two charts, the differences are:

Some PCI-E lanes for Thunderbolt support

Four native USB 3.0 ports. Finally.

Official support of DDR3-1600

Intel Rapid Start Technology (not directly on the chart, but included in "Responsiveness Technologies")

You might be disappointed that there are only four USB 3.0 ports, and still only two SATA 6G ports. Intel says the native USB 3.0 ports will provide better performance than provided by third-party USB 3.0 controllers, and there's a subtle extra advantage in that the on-chip ports don't require any PCI-E lanes to implement. Still, I had hoped for more from this upgrade, as I did from the X79 Express chipset.

Disappointments with the chipset aside, let's get to testing this setup.

Comments

Seems to be OK, but there is not enough of a performance increase to warrant changing from my 2600K. The faster on-board graphics may be enough of a plus for some users, but I'm already on discrete graphics these days.Ivy Bridge does enable the mainboard's PCI-E 3.0 features, but I don't think that your card is 3.0 compliant. If there is a huge advantage to PCI-E 3.0 as opposed to 2.0 operation, that would make me want to change over.Thanks for the review. It was a good read.

I agree. As a gamer I don't see a real advantage to upgrading from my i7 2600k either. I don't usually overclock, but I'll certainly consider it now after reading this article. That should give me another 18 months+ use out of the SB, as a retiree that makes me happy. So, in the meantime, for the price of a new IB CPU upgrade I can put the $$ to better use upgrading my PCI-E 2.0 GPU a few notches and increasing the memory from a 1 GB to a 2 GB.

Looks like the HD4000 will come a little closer to the HD6550D on the A8 APUs. I can't wait to get my hands on one and see first-hand. Sounds like the 6550D is still going to be a better video solution, minus QuickSync of course. And you can pair a discrete card to it.

Speaks volumes for the entry-level market, though, not much for the market the 3770K is in.

"Looks like the HD4000 will come a little closer to the HD6550D on the A8 APUs."

I have an A8 APU and when paired with the 1GB XFX HD6670 Radeon card I have, it performs pretty good. It's a good overclocker and most of the available socket FM-1 mainboards have a ~lot~ of useable features on them. It represents excellent value for the low cost of ownership.

since this is just a die shrink, and not an architecture change, we don't see, nor should we expect to see, much in the way of performance over the previous generation. The real win here are the power and thermals. The few new features are a nice bonus.

:) It'll be nice for people who don't already have SB though. I'm looking to replace my aging Phenom II 955, and this is just what the doctor ordered. And I'll be damn pleased with overclocking to "only" 4.7 GHz, lol. I've got a water rig, so I figure I should be able to maintain a clock like that, or maybe push it even higher.

I don't get it.Hilbert Hagedoorn (Mr. GURU 3D, himself) says that the i7-3770K is an excellent overclocker, (guru3d.com/reviews) while you say otherwise.Is there such a large difference between Engineering Samples, or is this the same-o, same-o from Intel, where there's a large gap in performance from one (supposedly) identical cpu to another?It's fairly common knowledge that retail bought cpu's OC better than the engineering samples given out to review sites. Is this the case concerning the cpu that you tested, and that a retail version may actually OC much, much better than the one you have?If so, then the reviewing of any free sample should never be done. Ever.If any reviewer can't afford, or is too cheap, to buy a random retail component for reviewing, then the review is completely suspect, since it does NOT apply to what real people buy themselves off-the-shelf.

So? Tom's Hardware says "Can Core i7-3770K catch a break with power users eager to overclock? Unless you?re using an extreme form of cooling, I?m afraid not." HardOCP says 4.8GHz would crash in their stress tests while 4.7GHz was stable...exactly the results I obtained. Anandtech says "While I had no issues getting my 3770K up to 4.6GHz on the stock cooler, Sandy Bridge will likely be the better overclocker for most."

So yes, in answer to your question, there is a difference between engineering samples; in fact there's a difference between retail samples, as any overclocker knows. And as for "large difference", the 4.9GHz Hilbert reached was a mere 4.2% better than the 4.7GHz I reached, so your definition of "large" seems a little off to me.

No review sites normally buy retail samples of the products they review. Even if we did, waiting for a retail Ivy Bridge CPU would mean you'd read all these reviews weeks later than you would otherwise. And I'm not sure I could wait that long for your appreciation.

After reading this review and others, I'm curious about what the Ivy Bridge mobile parts will bring to the table. Heat dissipation seems to be a problem for the chip compared to Sandy Bridge, and laptops (particularly ultrabook/thin types) have a harder time cooling themselves than desktops.

It looks possible that even if it brings better power usage, throttling might bring overall performance down if a manufacturer isn't attentive to their cooling system design.

No reason to even consider an ungrade based on this. My 2500k on gen3 z68 with H100 liquid is happy and stable at 4.8. While the old 5770 showed the shortcomings of Intel's on board graphics, I was hoping that the bandwidth might provide some performance improvement for 256 bit cards like my 6870 or two of them crossfired.

I didn't test whether the extra bandwidth improves graphics performance, but I doubt it will. Tom's Hardware did a fascinating comparison some months back on the performance differences the number of PCI-E lanes makes-- they took a graphics card from x16 to x8 to x4 by taping over some of the card's connectors, forcing it to run in "lower" modes. Going to x8 made no real difference and the card worked pretty well even at x4.

So doubling the potential throughput from x16 2.0 to x16 3.0 won't make any difference because no current software is trying to pump that much information across PCI-E.

The real win for PCI-E 3.0 would be with non-video card devices, like PCI-E SSDs. Of course the trouble is that with current Ivy Bridge systems only the CPU has PCI-E 3.0 lines (the X77 Express chipset is still limited to PCI-E 2.0...and two SATA6 ports...and four USB 3.0 ports...because Intel is lazy), so the only slots with this connectivity are the one or two X16 slots a board will have, and these aren't the slots you'd put a non-graphics card in. Sigh.

Did you all do any comparative power analysis between the new ivy and older sandy and other CPUs from AMD? It would be interesting to see some power usage and performance per watt statistics, other than just simply how well the cpu performs at a certain overclock since this is just a die shrink of the sandy bridge generation.

Well, Intel says the TDP of the 3770K is 77 watts, whereas the TDP of the 2600K is 95 watts. In the article I calculate that if you ran both processors at full load (stock clocks) 24/7 for a year, you'd save a little over $20 in electricity costs with Ivy Bridge. An 18 watt advantage under load is nice, but irrelevant for a desktop system, as is performance per watt.

Where this will make a real difference, as I notice in the review, is with laptop/ultrabook/portable devices. The lower power draw should make a real difference in battery life, allowing either smaller batteries (and smaller devices), longer life with the same size batteries, or any combination. This would be hard to test since you'd need two mobile devices with the only difference being the processor...and I only had a desktop CPU anyway.

The spam has been occurring more frequently. It used to be one a week, and I lived with it.Last week I started getting a few more and today there were three when I got home for work. There's no way to block the sneaky buggers without blocking Benchmark Reviews.

If it goes back to one a week that would make me happy. If it increases again then I don't think I would stick around. We'll see how it goes. Maybe you guys can change the character test to four or five alphanumeric characters instead of three, or two short words. If it's spam bots that might help, if someone posts the spam manually then it wouldn't.

I honestly don't even know why they bother with the spam. Who the hell is actually visiting those sites, much less giving them business? I visited one spammer's site once just to see what the hell was going on, and it was some terribad chinese merchandise site selling the crappiest looking items I'd seen anywhere, ever.

Several reasons: one, many (most?) SB chips will over clock better than IB, so it generally will not be possible to over clock an IB to the same degree as an SB. Also, since we know the IB has better instructions-per-clock, it will always win, however slightly, when the two CPUs are compared at the same clock speed.

#Have you guys seen this for the new version? —
feralshad0w2013-05-31 12:37

I have the little i5 brother of this and its great, have you guys seen this for the new version though? It's a promotional give away from intel for the i7-4770k. I wonder if the next gen will be able to overclock better.